


Under the water

by belantana



Category: Little Fish
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-02
Updated: 2009-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It's quiet under the water, but louder too. Sometimes your heart like a stopwatch countdown and the air through your teeth like the final siren, too late, too late.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the water

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/26480.html). With thanks to lost_spook for the prompt.

It all began with the pencils from Woolworths. The first thing Lionel gave to Tracy. Bright-painted six-sided wooden pencils, not a blunt point among them. Cardboard box with edges crisp as metal.

She took them to the game, and while Mum cheered and her brother Ray leered and the crowd stomped their feet, she balanced her notebook on her lap and drew pictures. She always kept an eye on the game though, through the white curtain of her hair. Lionel always played well.

After the game she'd show him her drawing – a castle, or a spaceship, or the sea. Lionel would hold it at arm's length with one eye screwed shut, scratching his beard, and after a long minute's scrutiny, declare it a masterpiece. Look at you, you shiny girl, he'd say, too busy being Leonardo fucking da Vinci to watch a man play footy, hey?

That was Tracy's cue to recite his statistics from the game with eager accuracy – goals, points, that one that hit the post, that impossible goal from the wide angle just outside the fifty with the sun in your eyes, marks, free kicks, corridor kicks, possessions inside the pocket and Lionel, you gotta stop shoving people in the back.

Lionel's trademark was impossible goals. Tight angles, cross breezes, wrong footed, he'd squeeze it through the posts more often than not. It was when he was straight up dead centre in front of the posts that he always missed.

 

It's quiet under the water, but louder too. Sometimes your heart like a stopwatch countdown and the air through your teeth like the final siren, too late, too late.

 

After the game, the empty stands stunk of meat pies and spilled VB, sour and metallic. Lionel took them out for steak, Tracy and Mum and Ray. The second thing Lionel gave Tracy. Not the steak, but the look on Mum's face when they turned heads at the restaurant. There's Lionel Dawson. Lionel Dawson who could have any one of the bright young things this side of the Nullarbor and look, there he is with Janelle Heart and her two little kids.

The things that Tracy gave Lionel, well you could fill an ocean with those. But she didn't mind. He gave her the pencils, and he gave her that feeling with the look on Mum's face, like her heart filled to bursting with water.

 

The ocean gave her Jonny. While she was sitting in the stands, meat pies and spilled VB, drawing a boat and a tropical island for Lionel and watching the game through her white curtain of hair, while Cabramatta was still called Cabramatta, Jonny was pitching and rolling with the waves, coming, coming, coming.

She saw them on the telly before they arrived at her primary school, one by one, small dark children still smelling of salt spray and seasickness and fear. Jonny wasn't quiet for long. Defying the barriers of language, Jonny was what the teachers called Trouble with a Capital F.

Tracy liked trouble. Jonny liked Tracy, but he didn't like going under the water. He sat on the edge of the pool and watched her duckdive, already turning heads of older girls with his brown shoulders and bright smile.

Jonny, Mum said, was going to be Trouble with that smile. Lionel just winked at Tracy across the dinner table. And when the trouble came, it wasn't Jonny at all.

 

Sometimes, Tracy felt like Lionel gave her under-the-water. Under-the-water, when everything else was blurry and muffled but your own heart sounded like a countdown timer and the air through your teeth like the final siren. An ocean of selfish silence.

But then things got complicated. It turned out that while Lionel loved Mum more than he loved all the bright young things this side of the Nullarbor, that wasn't saying much, because he also loved Brad more than he loved Mum, and Brad was old and dark and hairy. It turned out that the impossible goals became more frequently impossible than they became goals. And it turned out that the under-the-water feeling cost a whole lot more than either Tracy or Lionel could afford.

 

The last thing Tracy gave Lionel was the pencils. She found them at the bottom of her wardrobe when she was packing up to move to the flat, after the money, after the house, after everything. She had thought she'd draw him a picture but the fish looked funny and she wasn't a child any more.

She took the pencils down to the beach and stuck them in the sand, one by one, in a row. Short, long, long, short. Pencil goalposts.

Pencil goalposts for Lionel, kicker of impossible goals from a wide angle just outside the fifty with the sun in his eyes. An ocean for an ocean. They poked lopsidedly from the sand like tiny fingers pointing to the sky.


End file.
